Fame has a price. To get an idea just take a look at the multimedia section of the Windows Store to get an idea of the various clones of the popular VLC players that regularly make an appearance.

The VideoLAN team (developers of the VLC Player) is still hard at work on the Windows 8 and RT port of the popular media player, but shadowy developers can be seen trying to take advantage of the popularity of the original software by coding clones.

The idea, ultimately, is to trick people into believing that they are downloading the real deal.

There have already been a few pretenders to the throne, with good old Microsoft even removing one from the Windows Store. A couple of more fakes have been spotted recently, however.

Both apps come with basic barebones feature sets, a simple and barely serviceable user interface, and unsurprisingly both apps carry a shareware license — without a trial version, at that.

What this means is that people who wish to install these applications have no alternative but to pay for the download — $2.99 for VLCC Play and an eye-watering $3.49 for VLCM Player.

Now this would be no issue at all, if these were not using the VLC name to gain attention and featured some powerful options and support for a wider variety of audio and video formats. But this is clearly an attempt to secure some money from unsuspecting users.

As for the original VLC player, it should be arriving any time now. The developers have already sent a test build to backers of the projects Kickstarter fundraising campaign.

Chances are that the real application will be arriving in the next month or two.